So, it's been many many years since I've played Caesar IV. Actually lost the game after Direct2Drive sold out to Gamefly since Gamefly doesn't carry it, so I lost access. But a friend told me that gamestop has it so I bought it again.

In any event, I'm looking to refresh my memory of how to play Caesar IV and just one of the questions that has come to my mind is the following:

1. Are workplaces and residential buildings disconnected in Caesar IV?What I mean is that I can build residential areas completely far away from the work buildings as the peeps in C4 do not need to actually travel to a worksite, is this correct?

2. Is there an optimal number of farming buildings to build for x amount of farm fields?In other words, for 2 vegetable farms, how many vegetable fields can those two vegetable farm buildings handle? Does this change for sheep and cattle? If so, how many is optimal for each, the grains, veggies, sheep, cattle, vinyards, oil groves etc (if they are different than each other).

Any other tips you want to throw in, please feel free. I'm only playing the scenarios as I was never one to play campaigns.

Thanks

Last edited by Kuplo on Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

My first bit of advice is to play the kingdom portion of the campaign at the very least. It is the game's tutorial and it will refresh your memory on the game play.

Buildings that require workers, plebian or equites, don't have to be right next to housing. You just need to have sufficient numbers of those classes living in your city to fill jobs.

I am not one to "spreadsheet" a game out to figure how many of something is optimal. I don't play that way. However, I normally build two fields per farm and it seems to work well for me.

Remember to build a well as soon as you build your first housing. Without water people won't move in.

Use the game overlay maps to determine if your housing and people are getting proper coverage from various services.

Tax offices only tax markets and equestrian housing. Taxes alone won't keep you out of debt. Get an export trade going.

You can ignore requests, but don't ignore demands from Caesar.

Even when you are not it debt, you favor slowly falls unless you counteract it with some positive like meeting requests. Meeting demands does not raise favor. If you fail to meet a demand your favor drops severely.

Each gift is only good for three uses. After that you are just wasting money. So use gifts wisely and sparingly to raise your favor when needed.

Prosperity is a function of the average level of housing in your city. If you have too many insulae vs domus and manors/mansions, your prosperity level will be low. A higher percentage of domus and manors/mansions will help raise prosperity.

Cities completely enclosed in walls allow housing to evolve higher. Gatehouses are consider part of the wall. Rivers and bodies of water are considered part of the wall, as long as the actual wall ends in the water itself.

Stay out of debt or get out of debt by the end of the game year. It will lower your prosperity rating.

Try to arrange things like temples, bathhouses, markets, entertainment, etc. around your housing so that it covers as much housing as possible. Naturally, aqueducts, pump houses and reservoirs are going to be needed along with fountains to ensure housing develops to higher levels.

To attain culture, prosperity, favor, security ratings of 100% every housing building must be covered by nearly every type of service building. You can have a house that lacks one item, like religious coverage from a shrine or temple to Mars, but it must have coverage from all the other gods shrines/buildings, all education, all healthcare, and all entertainment. If a couple of housing units lacks more than one item, the rating will never hit 100%. 100% is the ratings required in the last missions of the campaign.

Playing the campaign is not much different than playing the scenarios. The campaign missions start out easy at first and become more difficult as they progress. You have to complete the kingdom before you can play the republic and completion of the republic is required before playing the empire campaign.

Can I just sell goods to those other cities on the world map or is it a trade system where they barter the goods they want for the goods they give?

I tried it yesterday but by the point I had thought to try that I'd run into heavy debt and the legions of Rome were at my gate so I quit and didn't have the chance to see if any of the trade partners were going to pay me denarii for my goods or if they would only come to trade if I was also buying from them.

Yes, you can just buy goods or just sell goods, but not barter goods for goods.

I export as much as I can mostly and only buy small amounts of imports when they are needed. Often, I turn buying off, if I'm using too much denarii and the end of the year is coming.

You want to keep a positive balance in the denarii that you have on hand or get to a positive balance by the end of the year.

You may need to stop trading items if you are trying to gather enough of something to meet a request or demand. You can put items on "stockpile" via the resource advisor menu by placing a checkmark in the box next to the item. This will prevent export trade and the sale of the item in your own markets until the checkmark is removed. You may need more than one warehouse to hold goods being stockpiled if the amount is fairly sizeable.